We know that global warming is a big threat. Oh, it may help us with our mummy problem, and be a boon for great tits, but it causes more problems than it solves – shrinking horses, causing seals to be oversexed, causing poison ivy to become even itchier, making trees less colorful, making trees more colorful, making reptiles walk uphill, destroying opium in Afghanistan, and even increasing cannibalism to unacceptable levels, with that last prediction courtesy of former CNN founder and exotic diner Ted Turner.

And now it turns out that global warming is causing a new problem: it is shrinking the size of our buns.

Long-term global warming could cause loaves of bread to shrink in size due a reduction in the amount of protein in grains, Australian scientists have found. Loaves based on 2050 atmospheric carbon dioxide levels predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were baked by researchers at the Victorian government and Melbourne University. They emerged smaller and crumpled compared to their present-day counterparts.

The implications for this are manifold. With smaller bread, buns will be smaller, and hot dogs will slip out of buns. Salsa dripping from smaller tacos and burritos will create slip and fall hazards, and predictably, areas with undocumented migrants will be hardest hit. And what are we going to do when sandwiches become more wich than sand?

It’s a pity that scientists have not yet focused on global warming’s effect on hot dogs. Global warming may shrink the size of your buns, but what if it also shrinks the size of your hot dogs as well? If they both get smaller proportionately, keeping the wiener-bun ratio at the same constant, is this really such a problem?

What do you think buns looked like before industrialization, before carbon dioxide started messing with pastries? I’ll bet bagels were as big as car tires. Croissants were probably the size of javelins. Cupcakes probably were the size of cakes. A loaf of bread was probably so big that it had to be pulled in a wagon by a team of horses.

Do you think more petite pastries will be the biggest price we pay for global warming?